Blogs By FansC70 At The Bat
Sponsor


Cardinals_WideSkyscraper.jpg

Baseball Schedule is your best source for the latest St Louis Cardinals Schedule information as well as keeping up with division rivals including Cubs Schedule, Reds Schedule, Brewers Schedule and Astros Schedule.

Bet on the Cardinals with Sports Interaction's MLB betting lines


Slots Galore Casino Tournaments

Get your tickets from Bubba! Cheap St. Louis Cardinals Tickets and more, including tickets for the next MLB All-Star Game. Bubba's got Boston Red Sox Tickets and New York Yankees Tickets

Authentic, large selection of Cardinals memorabilia, guaranteed and certified.

Subscribe
RSS Feed

Archives

Players

Categories


Alliance tickets has an extensive inventory of St. Louis Cardinals Tickets , Colorado Rockies Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and Seattle MarinersTickets.

With all of the St Louis tickets out there, Cardinals tickets and Rams tickets make for great presents. GoTickets.com can fill all of your sports tickets needs, just check out our testimonials!

"It Just Feels Like It's Time"

Posted on October 31, 2011 at 12:26 PM
Filed Under: St. Louis Cardinals
ST LOUIS, MO - OCTOBER 25: Manager Tony La Ru...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The press conference just ended.  There will be links and stories throughout the internet soon (and, as long as it has taken me to write this, many are now up).  Most of Cardinal Nation already knows, though, that Tony La Russa has decided to retire from managing the St. Louis Cardinals.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  In 1964, after an amazing comeback had led to a World Championship for the Cardinals, manager Johnny Keane left his position with the club to take the same job with the team he had just defeated, the New York Yankees.  Keane was furious that the club had thought to fire him while the team was struggling and wouldn't accept a new contract with the organization.  (Hat tip to Bob Netherton for bringing the situation to mind on Twitter.)

Now, 47 years later, an equally remarkable comeback has led to another World Championship that will have to be defended with a new man in the managerial chair.

There are a lot of names being thrown around.  Jose Oquendo, of course, and former Cardinal Terry Pendleton.  Terry Francona will also be considered a front-runner.  Even Ryne Sandberg, as a jab at those baby bears up north.  There's no telling who the next manager of the St. Louis Cardinals will be, but let's wait on that.  It's time to look at who the last manager of the St. Louis Cardinals was.

A West-Coast guy that came to St. Louis already well established, it took TLR a long while to reach the fan base, or at least portions of it.  I still remember when a group of fans pooled their money and rented a plane to fly over a spring training game trailing a banner that said "Fire La Russa".  The early years in St. Louis were on the rough side.

Which really makes no sense.  His first year, the Cards are one win away from a World Series.  He was the reason the club went and got Mark McGwire, which gave us some amazing memories in 1998 and 1999.

Then we flip the calendar and begin one of the best decades ever for this organization.  2000, they go to the NLCS.  2001, they lose a heartbreaking Game 5 in the NLDS.  2002, back to the NLCS.  2003 was a down year, but it also led us to a great baseball book, Three Nights In August.  2004, a 105-win team that runs into a team of destiny in the World Series.  2005, a 100-win team that may have lost in the NLCS, but not without a defining moment.

All of that leading up to 2006.  An 83-win team that was better than their record, but was more remembered for stumbling into the playoffs than for the fact that they could have been an 88-win squad with any sort of finish.  A team that got healthy at the right time and played some outstanding baseball (plus took advantage of miscues from Detroit) to win #10 for #10.

2007 and 2008 were disappointments, sure, but with Chris Carpenter out for both of those years, Tony did the best with what he had.  Both teams were in contention going into September, which is about the best you can hope for.

2009, another NLDS, though the results weren't what the club was hoping for.  2010 was the first year that the team really disappointed, as it collapsed in August and September after the big push to overtake the Reds.  When 2011 started so slowly, many people--including myself, as you can easily check--were wondering if it was time to move on, if the methods and message were getting stale.

Boy, was I wrong.

I think it's pretty interesting that even TLR thought mid-year that it was time to move on.  That he didn't necessarily have that fire in the belly that he used to.  He let John Mozeliak and Bill DeWitt know so they could be prepared and then he managed out the rest of the season, never letting on so as not to distract from what this team was trying to do.

We all know that he seemed more relaxed, more jovial, more emotional in the clubhouse than he'd been.  Do you remember the last TLR meltdown in the press room?  Neither do I.  It resembled 2006 in that Tony seemed to loosen up and the team responded with a spectacular run.  Now we know why.  Just like the team was playing with house money, everything in this postseason was gravy for La Russa as well.  He knew where he stood in history.  He knew what they'd done.  He could accept going out like that, but adding on was just the topper.

You have to give him credit, also, for not changing his mind after the Cards won.  He could have easily talked himself into coming back.  Adam Wainwright is returning, this team as constructed should make a major push next season, and he'd move past John McGraw in managerial wins.  However, the fire wasn't there.  Perhaps that week he took when dealing with shingles opened him to the possibility of, if not life without baseball, at least life outside of the dugout.  He stayed true to the principles that made him Tony La Russa.  Love him or hate him, you know that he's always done that.

Tony's the only manager a good chunk of Cardinal Nation (at least the wired ones that are using Twitter and reading the internet) have ever known.  I remember Whitey Herzog, I remember Joe Torre, but my Cardinal fandom really developed with La Russa's tenure in St. Louis.  Couple his time here with the explosion of the internet coverage and the ability to really live and breathe this team and it seems impossible that he won't be here constantly, staring out of the dugout with his sunglasses and thinking two innings ahead to when he'll need to double switch for David Freese.

How different is it going to be around here without Tony?  There's no doubt he was the innovator.  People pick on his use of the bullpen, but now everyone has a LOOGY and makes 2-3 swaps a game.  Even if he took it to the extreme, it was because he knew baseball lives in the minutiae.  It may only give you a 1% better chance to go to the lefthander, but so many games are won or lost in that 1%.  Tony's passion for winning sometimes overrode what fans saw as common sense, but it shaped this team and this organization.

There's no doubt in my mind that no other manager in baseball and very likely no other baseball is the history of the game could have gotten the 2011 Cardinals to the title.  None.  No other manager could have his team that focused, that determined, for that length of time.  Sure, TLR had Carpenter and Albert Pujols to help reinforce that message, but his prepared and focused demeanor was exactly what this club needed to fight off certain death day after day.

So what do we do as fans when we can't roll our eyes at the latest lineup experiment?  When we have a named closer and a set pattern of doing things?  When we can't blame the usage (or lack thereof) of a young player on "Tony loves his veterans"?  All of our crutches, all of the things we thought we knew about the Cardinals, about this team, get to be rethought in the light of someone else other than #10 at the helm.  It's going to be a hard process and I think it'll be something that helps us appreciate TLR all the more.

I know this managerial search is going to be a topic we'll hit on a number of times in the coming days, but right now, there's really only one thing to say.

Thanks for the memories, Tony.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta


Leave a comment




1 Comments

1 Comment | Leave a comment

user-pic
WilliaminMaine | October 31, 2011 1:04 PM | Reply

Shocking news. But he went out on top. You can't ask for more than that.

Leave a comment




Cardinals_MediumRectangle.jpg

UCB_11_trans_dark_sm.png

Search



BallHyped Best Sports Blogs Book
This blog was featured in the Best Sports Blogs of 2010 Book!
• Pick up the limited print edition
• Free Best Sports Blogs ebook 


United Cardinal Bloggers

FRIENDS OF THE UCB


Download the iPhone or Android UCB app by clicking on the nice orange picture.
Open in Mobile App 

And check out the UCB Network over at LockerDome!
lockerdome-share_63x63.png
  



Other Cardinal Blogs

Recommended Cardinal Forum

Other Cardinal Sites

General Baseball Blogs/Sites



Heroes
Matt Holliday (5)
Matt Carpenter (4)
Rafael Furcal (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Jon Jay (3)
Kyle Lohse (3)
Lance Lynn (3)
Yadier Molina (3)
David Freese (2)
Adam Wainwright (2)
Lance Berkman (1)
Allen Craig (1)
Shane Robinson (1)
Fernando Salas (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2011 Top Hero: Lance Berkman (24)
2010 Top Heroes: Matt Holliday and Albert Pujols (24)
2009 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (28)
2008 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (25)

Goats
Matt Holliday (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
David Freese (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Jason Motte (3)
Marc Rzepczynski (3)
Adam Wainwright (3)
Rafael Furcal (2)
Tyler Greene (2)
J.C. Romero (2)
Fernando Salas (2)
Mitchell Boggs (1)
Matt Carpenter (1)
Tony Cruz (1)
Daniel Descalso (1)
Jon Jay (1)
Erik Komatsu (1)
Kyle Lohse (1)
Victor Marte (1)
Eduardo Sanchez (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2011 Top Goat: Ryan Theriot (12)
2010 Top Goat: Brendan Ryan (14)
2009 Top Goats: Rick Ankiel and Todd Wellemeyer (13)
2008 Top Goat: Troy Glaus (13)

2012 Happy Flights
Happy Flights: 7
Happy Flight Opportunities: 12
Happy Flight %: 58%

Through 5/20

    Cardinal Nation Approval Ratings (March 2012)
    Adam Wainwright 91.9% (down 2.8%)
    Chris Carpenter 90.1% (up 3.2%)
    Lance Berkman 88.6%
    Tony La Russa 88.2% (up 17.4%)
    Yadier Molina 87.4% (up 3.7%)
    Matt Holliday 87.3% (down 3.8%)
    David Freese 85.5%
    John Mozeliak 85.4% (up 13.3%)
    Mike Shannon 85.3% (up 0.4%)
    Jose Oquendo 84.7%
    Derrick Goold 82.8% (down 5.0%)
    Mark McGwire 82.6% (up 20.1%)
    John Rooney 81.5% (down 2.8%)
    Mike Matheny 81.1%
    Bill DeWitt 79.8% (up 8.8%)
    United Cardinal Bloggers 78.9%
    Skip Schumaker 73.3% (up 9.2%)
    Jim Hayes 71.9% (down 4.2%)
    Jon Jay 71.1%
    B.J. Rains 69.5% (down 0.9%)
    Kyle Lohse 68.9% (up 13.8%)
    Dan McLaughlin 68.0%
    Joe Strauss 67.7% (up 10.2%)
    Ricky Horton 67.5% (down 1.6%)
    Al Hrabosky 66.4% (up 3.2%)
    Albert Pujols 54.9% (down 45.5%)
    Colby Rasmus 46.5% (down 35.3%)

    2011
    Dave Duncan 87.9% (up 0.9%)
    Matthew Leach 85.5%
    Pop Warner 76.7%
    Ryan Franklin 72.8% (up 3.1%)
    John Vuch 68.9%
    Jeff Luhnow 66.4%
    Dan Lozano 58.7%

    2009
    Rick Ankiel 83.9%
    Chris Duncan 69.1%


    Looking for St. Louis Cardinals Tickets?  TicketCity is your source for New York Yankees Tickets and World Series Tickets.

    Looking for Cardinals tickets? Stop by OnlineSeats. We’ve got Blues seats and even Rams games. Go to the coasts as well and catch a Celtics game or get Dodgers tickets.

    Referrals